Steam Brew Session IPA (4.9%)

Ik zag een blik halve liter Session IPA van Steam Brew in de LIDL. Het blik van 0,5 liter en 4,9% is zilverkleurig met koperkleurige lijnen. Het toont een steampunkachtige scene van een dame met wit lang haar, en een ontblote schouder met daarop een vat met een S. Naast de scene op het blik staat aan beide kanten van de scene de slogan 'LET'S OIL THE GEARS OF LIFE'. De kleine letters zijn niet goed te lezen vanwege de zilverkleurige ondergrond. Vanwege de icoontjes en gebrek aan Amerikaanse logo's lijkt het mij geen Amerikaans bier. Terwijl ik dat wel als eerste associatie had. Als ik verder kijk lees ik de producent: Eichbaum Gmbh & Co uit Mannheim.  

Dat is Duits?

The Eichbaum beer brewing company is located in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg in Germany. It was founded in 1679 by Mannheim's Councillor Jean du Chêne (which means "Oak tree", or "Eichbaum" in German). Today, the Eichbaum brewing company is owned by Actris AG. Dietmar Hopp, one founder of SAP AG, also owns Actris. In Mannheim, the beer is sometimes lovingly called corpse water. The brewery is located next to a graveyard and the brewing water is directly pumped from the earth. However, this has no impact on the water quality, because several waterproof clays protect the fountain water against impurities. During the time that University of Maryland University College had a campus in Mannheim, this beer was a popular choice among its students. In some graduation ceremonies Eichbaum representatives had been invited. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichbaum)

Bijzondere locatie... maar goed wat kan ik vinden over het bier?

It was more than 335 years ago that Jean de Chaine from Wallonia founded a brewpub in Mannheim which he called Eichbaum, the German translation of his family name. Today, this is one of the largest and most efficient breweries in Baden-Württemberg. It is the oldest company in Mannheim but also one of the most modern. State-of-the-art brewing and bottling technologies make for an annual output of 1.8 million hectolitres. More than 16 different beers and many different trading units make Privatbrauerei Eichbaum an attractive partner. (https://www.eichbaum.com/Unternehmen-Portrait.html)

Eichbaum was founded in 1679 as a small brewpub, and while the exact location changed, its domicile has always been Mannheim. Its traditional art of brewing in accordance with the German Purity Law dated 1516 guarantees Eichbaum beers’ top quality – since 1679. 1679 Jean de Chaine establishes the "Zum Aichbaum" brewpub in Mannheim. Eichbaum-Brauerei was “born” on Friday, 3 October 1679, at least in accordance with the Julian calendar, which then still applied in Electoral Palatinate, ruled by Elector Karl Ludwig. Today, we use the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, which in the 17th century, however, was only used by Roman Catholic rulers. Be that as it may, the Gregorian calendar provides for the 13th of October as the day of establishment, when the Mannheim council, chaired by Heinrich Clignet, approved of Jean de Chaine’s application for a licence for a brewpub at his home in Q 5, 23–24 (u.i.F.: moderne Adressenangabe? Dann sollte, wo zutreffend, hinter die Angaben: today’s address) and allowed him “to hang up a “zum Aichbaum” sign at his home in Mauritzgaßen”. 1689 "Zum Aichbaum" brewpub destroyed in the War of the Palatine Succession. After having been destroyed in the War of the Palatine Succession, Mannheim spent almost a decade in agony. Only the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697 and Elector Johann Wilhelm asking refugees to return home changed that. While Mannheim thus saw its second rebirth within one century, the “Zum Eichbaum“ brewpub’s rebirth took a bit longer. Its site in Q 5 had also been destroyed in its entirety. 1717 "Zum grünen Eichbaum" established by Johannes Blanckart in P5, 9-10. The pub licence mentioned above was only re-activated, for “Zum grünen Eichbaum“, in 1717, when it was acquired by Jean Blancard (Plancard), born in Hanau in 1664 and with roots in a Wallonian family of brewers. When he was granted Heidelberg citizenship in 1692, he had already germanised his name to Johann Blanckart and in 1698 he seems to have been one of the first who relied on the marketing power of the new Mannheim town privileges. Having been granted Mannheim citizenship in 1705 and obviously successful as a brewer and landlord, in 1717 he bought another house, in P 5, 9, for 300 guilders and applied for another pub licence – for “Zum grünen Eichbaum”. 1723 First brewers' guild regulations in Mannheim In 1723, Elector Karl Philipp issued the Mannheim brewers guild laws, confirmed by his successor, Karl Theodor, in 1746. The guild included no fewer than 69 beer brewers at 50 breweries in a town of only 9,000, of whom almost a third were soldiers, servants or court staff. The guild was successful in ensuring its members’ livelihood, and this is attested to by the fact that by the middle of the 18th century the number of breweries had only risen to 71 although the number of inhabitants had doubled. And “Zum grünen Eichbaum“ was certainly one of the established brewpubs in Manheim. The documented owner in 1733 was a certain Johannes Werner Ziegler, who two years before had married Katharina Elisabeth, Philipp Michael Blanckart’s widow. In 1735, the couple expanded its estate in P 5, acquiring the adjacent house for 500 guilders. ... In 1820, the heirs of Johann Philipp Mayer, who had died in 1817, received 10,000 guilders for “Zum grünen Eichbaum“ from Philipp Dewald, the master brewer here since 1817. The new owner, however, was not really successful. In March 1827 - only seven years later, that is - the entire estate had to be auctioned off, the beneficiary being 24-year-old master brewer Heinrich Forschner from Schriesheim, who paid 150 guilders... Mannheim’s population finally increased again from the mid_1820s and continued to do so – with the exception of people fleeing the area after the failed revolution in 1849 - until it had reached 25,000 by the mid-1850s. Another indication of the prevailing optimism in Mannheim is the construction of the first solid bridge of the River Neckar, the “Kettenbrücke“, which was opened on 15 November 1845. Forschner seems to have been equally dynamic. And now wonder: since by the middle of the 19th century only 20 breweries were left, these 20 had to make up for the loss. But this, of course, raised the question of how to store beer properly. Cooling cellars could not be built in the town centre, but with the new “Kettenbrücke“ the northern bank of the Neckar had been developed. Forschner made use of this opportunity in conjunction with his 34-year-old fellow-brewer Ignaz Rößler of the “Zum Schneeberg“ brewpub and acquired a 2,200 sq m field in the 5. Sandgewann on the road to Käfertal, where the two built a 10 m deep and almost 100 m long so-called summer beer cellar. This is how the brewery started to end up in Käfertal. In FY 1886/87, then, the brewery’s output crossed the 100,000 hl mark for the first time. Such a volume could, of course, not be sold in Mannheim alone. “Eichbaum“ had already presented itself at the Wereldtentoonstelling van Antwerpen in 1885 and won a gold medal. While Mannheim and its environs remained the main sales area, beer was also shipped to more remote areas in Germany and to France. ... In 1923, Edmund Hofmann jun. became a member of the Worms-based “Werger-Brauerei AG“ supervisory board, with which in the same year Eichbaum had formed a syndicate. That was the time of hyper-inflation. The Treaty of Versailles had made Germany pay reparations, with which it was now in default. The turbulences in 1923 meant Eichbaum and Werger-Brauerei in Worms started talking, and on 10 October both companies’ supervisory boards and executive boards agreed on a kind of syndicate, for which purpose Eichbaum shares were to be swapped for Werger shares, but with Eichbaum remaining operationally independent. Louis Rühl, a member of both companies’ executive boards since 1924, sort of personified the link. This link was made a merger in 1929, and the new company was called “Eichbaum-Werger-Brauereien AG“, domiciled at Worms. Both companies remained in operation, independently in Mannheim and Worms and with all their staff. ... At the beginning of the 1940s, in December, Mannheim was the target of its first RAF area bombing. Mannheim was hit more than 150 times until the war was over and in May 1945 three quarters of all buildings had been destroyed, with half of all residental areas gone. While surprisingly industrial buildings had not been destroyed to the same extent. Eichbaum-Brauerei had already had suffered damage rather early on. During the night-time raid on 9/10 May 1941, one bomb exploded in front of the brewhouse, damaging some windows. Much worse, however, was the fact that 45-year-old master brewer Georg Riedlinger suffered a stroke and died.... At the beginning of 1971, the Eichbaum history saw a sudden twist. The news was that the Feitel heirs in Switzerland and the three banks having an interest in Eichbaum-Werger wanted to sell off their shares. These did indeed go to “Henninger-Bräu KGaA“ in Frankfurt. But the Eichbaum-Werger executive board was able to keep its company more or less independent in this new complex structure, not least because of the gratifying profits fed into the Henninger coffers and very convincing KPIs. The name change to “Eichbaum-Brauereien AG“ in 1972 – the company still being domiciled at Worms – was followed by another emphasis, in terms of advertising, on the “Eichbaum” umbrella brand. In 1973, "Durlacher Hof AG" was acquired and integrated - with its huge annual output of 120,000 hl not an easy undertaking. ... Having expanded too fast and being much leveraged, “Gebrüder März AG“, the parent company, had been in trouble since the early 1990s. In 1994, first rumours of a disposal of Eichbaum could be heard. In 1998, Dietmar Hopp acquired a majority of the shares in “Henninger-Bräu“ including its subsidiaries Eichbaum and Freiberger Brauhaus, later consolidated as “Actris AG“.... 2010 Management-Buy-Out: with Jochen Keilbach independent again; company now called Privatbrauerei Eichbaum GmbH & Co. Over the next few years, "Odenwaldquelle GmbH" and “Park&Bellheimer AG" became part of the Actris Group and Freiberger Brauhaus was sold. And finally, Hopp sold off his shares, thus breaking up the Actris structure. After a feasibility study and a purchase price agreement, as of 30 December 2009 the Eichbaum-Brauereien AG assets and businesses were assigned to the newly to be founded “Privatbrauerei Eichbaum GmbH & Co. KG“. Thus starts a new chapter in our long Eichbaum history. The new company has been made leaner and thus more efficient, all in full cooperation with the works council (https://www.eichbaum.com/Unternehmen-Portratit-Historie.html)

We lezen eens verder:

You must be at least 16 years old to learn more about the German Craft Beer Resistance. (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

In the postapocalyptic world torn by tyranny and barbarism, six brave heroes fight against the Prohibition imposed upon them. Deep in the catacombs, they built their own small breweries  with extraordinary skill, love for detail and a stark inventiveness, for which they have to thank their irrepressible will to survive. Well hidden from watching eyes, they tinker tirelessly on their excellent beer creations. For the “brave six” (as they are named by sympathisers), the beer brewery is more than just a factory. (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

Ze brouwen diverse bieren"

Imperial Stout The combination of fermentation aromas from selected culture yeast and roasted malt produces a caramel-malt and roasted taste. Thanks to its deep black color and its creamy crown of foam, the Imperial Stout of “The Master” is an eye-catcher among the specialities. alc alcohol 7.5% vol. (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

German Red The powerful “German Red” bock beer captivates with its pleasant, malt-scented notes, as well as its interesting red colour – thanks to selected and intensively dried types of malt. It is rounded out with a slight bitterness, which is as elegant as “The Stranger” herself. alc alcohol 7.9% vol. (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

Op zich grappig dat de German Red zwaarder is dan de Imperial Stout en IPA!?

Imperial IPA Hopped three times and brewed with top-fermented ale yeast, as well as complexly produced malts, which ensure a red color and a powerful aroma, “The Sparks´” India Pale Ale convinces above all through the use of the hop varieties Yellow Sub and Mosaic, which complement each other in their citrussy and flowery aromas. alc alcohol 7.8% vol. (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

Session IPA The delicate but nevertheless aromatic body of the triple-hopped Session Pale Ale ensures a pleasant drinking experience. The exclusive hop variety “Vic Secret” surprises with exotic and tropical, fruity notes. The Steam Brew “Newcomer” of “The Sister” tastes the best when it is between 6 and 10 degrees Celsius. alc alcohol 4.9% vol. plato 11.5° Plato IBU Bitter units: 35 IBU Color: Golden-yellow note Vic Secret: Exotic & tropical with fruity notes of pineapple and passion fruit as well as pine and pine-tree ... The Sister The little sister of “The Spark”: Shiny is back! For not long at all, a mysterious, previously hidden combatant has made itself known. But it did not stay long in the city, as, just a few days ago, there was talk in the underground of a new beer creation, which has been creating a frenzy on the streets. “Shiny’s” IPA is clearly different from the stamp of the brave resistance brewer, but it nevertheless has the same goal: Revolution! It is called “The Sister” as a camouflage and protective shield for itself and its mother. Trust and openness had already cost too many innocents their lives ... There are many legends about the young woman. It is said that she was born outside of the city and had to flee the country with her mother, as there was a house search. She brought her profession – she had the same talent for brewing as her older brother – with her on her travels. At a small farm, she had a lot of time to perfect the craft of beer brewing. There, far from the city brewing units, she worked on her masterwork. In her Session IPA, you taste the distance from the city, the fruity-intensive intensiveness, and the freshness of the early year in the country. When, one night, she was betrayed, and the Prohibition police burned down the farm to its foundation stones, she fled with her mother in the last moment thanks to an old secret passage on the farm. In this night, as well, their mother told her everything about her brother, the revolution, the play for power in the city and the corruption that lurked behind every corner. After she got her mother into safety, “The Sister“ sallied out in the direction of the city, in order to support the resistance and to make her contribution as a part of the Steam Brew Group.  (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

Het bier is wat waterig zoet en ietwat metalig. Het doet me niet aan een IPA denken. Maar aan wat wel eigenlijk?

Wheat Pale Ale This hazy-fruity, intensively malty, triple-hopped Wheat Pale Ale with its balanced notes of citrus and exotic fruits, lent by the particular types of hops Citra and Hallertauer Blanc, is worth all the risk to “the farmer”. alc alc. 5,6% vol.  (https://steam-brew.com/en/)

 Tja, op het blik staat een German Design Award Special 2020!? Wat zou dat nou weer zijn.  

How can the sustainable transformation of our industry and society succeed? What new ways of thinking, materials and economic models are needed to achieve this goal? Today more than ever, outstanding design means providing answers to the challenges of our time, promoting thinking in circular models and realising visions of a better world based on the design of actions. Sometimes it is only small changes or ideas that have a big impact, sometimes it is entire business models. The top-class international jury of the German Design Award honours these groundbreaking design achievements - and the German Design Award makes the design trends visible across all sectors in a glittering setting. (https://www.german-design-award.com/en/)

Zouden ze het hebben gekregen vanwege het mooi overnemen van de specifieke stijl?

Steam beer is a highly effervescent beer made by fermenting lager yeasts at warmer ale yeast fermentation temperatures. It has two distinct but related meanings: Historic steam beer produced in California, and in the East at the James River Steam Brewery in Richmond, Virginia from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century; Modern California common beer, a competition category name for the beer family, which includes steam beers such as Anchor Steam beer. Historic steam beer comes from Bavaria Germany 1830, popularly associated with San Francisco and the U.S. West Coast, was brewed with lager yeast without the use of true refrigeration[1] (by ice or mechanical means). It was an improvised process, originating out of necessity, perhaps as early as the Gold Rush and at least 1860 in Nevada.[1] It was considered a cheap and low-quality beer, as shown by references to it in literature of the 1890s and 1900s.[2] Modern steam beer, also known as California common beer, was originated by Anchor Brewing Company, which trademarked the term Steam Beer in 1981. Although the modern company has corporate continuity with a small brewery which has made beer since the 1890s, Anchor Steam is a modern craft-brewed lager. The company does not claim any close similarity between its present-day product and turn-of-the-20th-century steam beer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

Etymology There have been various explanations for the use of the name "steam beer". According to Anchor Brewing, the name "steam" came from the fact that the brewery had no way to effectively chill the boiling wort using traditional means. So they pumped the hot wort up to large, shallow, open-top bins on the roof of the brewery so that it would be rapidly chilled by the cool air blowing in off the Pacific Ocean. Thus while brewing, the brewery had a distinct cloud of steam around the roof let off by the wort as it cooled, hence the name. Another explanation is that the carbon dioxide pressure produced by the 19th-century steam-beer-making process was very high, and that it may have been necessary as part of the process to let off "steam" before attempting to dispense the beer. It is also possible that the name or brewing process derive from Dampfbier (literally steam beer), a traditional German beer that was also fermented at unusually high temperatures and that may have been known to 19th-century American brewers, many of whom were of German descent; Dampfbier is an ale, however, not a lager.[3][4] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

Steam Ale or California Common is a specific style, but hard to pin down because there are many beers referred to a California Common when they’re still using an ale yeast. Add to this the fact that the beer is actually a lazy and incorrect style (as the yeast is being fermented at the wrong temperature), and you’ve got a kind of weird beer. (https://brewinreview.com/what-is-a-steam-beer/)

... why is it called Steam Ale? Why is it called California Common? Beer has always been the popular drink to have after a hard day’s work. So of course in 1800’s California during the height of the Gold Rush, beer was a popular beverage. However, tastes weren’t sophisticated and neither was the technology. The idea was to just make beer. Something to dumb the nerves that was good enough to drink plenty of after being in the California sun all day. It was a beer for the common folk. Very far from being a fancy drink. With many California breweries making the style at the time, it was one of the most abundant types of beers you could get in the area during the 18-hundreds; so it was quite literally common and from California. It was a basic drink for Californians. But the name Steam Ale has a bit more mystery behind it. Stories behind the steam aspect to the name are conflicted at best. A story that comes up quite a bit is that the style was one of necessity. Lager yeasts were used as they were cheap and easy to get. However, refrigeration wasn’t available in the area at the time and brewers needed to make do with what they had. Many brewers would allow their wort to chill on the roof of their brewery, and the steam from the cooling wort would rise off the building. Is that where the name Steam Ale is from? Another common story is that as the beer is fairly highly carbonated, when a new barrel was tapped beer would hiss rapidly out of it. This spray of beer looked like steam! The style is known for being of relatively high carbonation, plus, in the conditions of the day, the carbonation was even greater. A less prevalent story is that the name comes the German Dampfbier style. Dampfbier translates literally to “steam beer” and many 19th Century brewers in America were German. Dampfbier is actually an ale style though, so this story may be less likely. However, if we extrapolate this story, it’s not hard to imagine a German brewer in 1800’s California trying to make a Dampfbier with limited resources. Things get lost in translation, and maybe the Steam Ale is born? Whatever the story, or what you call it, the California Common is an underappreciated style that needs a bit more recognition. In order to completely appreciate it, drinkers need to understand the story and understand what it was and what is was trying to accomplish. Sure, it started its life as cheap piss to entertain miners at the end of a rough day, but it’s evolved into something different. There are some excellent examples of the style, most notably Anchor’s Steam Beer. (https://brewinreview.com/what-is-a-steam-beer/)

In fact, steam beer is one of the few styles born in the U.S. The others readily recognizable today are cream ale, kept alive in its dark ages 60 years ago by Rochester, New York-based Genesee Brewery; and modern light beer, introduced by Miller in 1975. Then there’s the steam-like Kentucky Common and the anise-flavored Pennsylvania Swankey, both long dead by the time interest from 21st-century beer geeks led to their reanimation. ... From the bottle or the glass, Anchor Steam works. This reputation is hard won and, like its native land, a work in progress. But the Japanese brewing giant Sapporo took over Anchor Brewing Co., Anchor Steam’s maker and California’s oldest brewery, this past summer, leaving its fans to ask, what’s the future of steam?... n the mid-1800s, especially after the discovery of gold, Americans started pouring into territorial California. Most were of northern European descent, and so lager was one of their choicest drinks. Lager dates from perhaps the Middle Ages, but really started to boom in the 19th century, when Bavarian brewers started experimenting with bottom-fermenting yeasts and, colder fermentation and aging using deep caves and cellars full of ice. (That was a departure from the top-fermenting yeasts and warmer temps that defined much older ale). The cold requirement made lager difficult to come by in the newly settled West Coast because, unlike back East, there were no ready sources of lots of ice. Plus, mechanical refrigeration would not emerge in the American brewing industry until the 1870s. ... the “steam” style, as it came to be known, was the first homegrown beer style in the U.S. “This beer is largely consumed throughout the state of California,” reads the “California Steam Beer” entry in the oft-cited 1901 work American Handy Book of the Brewing, Malting and Auxiliary Trades. “It is called steam beer,” authors Robert Wahl and Max Henius wrote in that entry, “on account of its high effervescing properties and the amount of pressure (‘steam’) it has in the packages.” Except not exactly. There is no agreed upon etymological back story for “steam” beer, but many theories. It could have been that pressure, or the sound that release of that pressure made when barrels were tapped and bottles opened. There’s also the theory that early batches of the brew were cooled on San Francisco rooftops, and the Pacific breeze collided with the just-boiled, pre-fermentation beer, throwing off clouds of steam. Then there’s the one about American brewers of German descent naming this ad-hoc creation after dampfbier back in the old country. Dampf means “steam,” and that beer was born in a remote area of Bavaria with whatever ingredients were readily available. Sound familiar? Whatever the origins of its name, the style took. Pre-Prohibition accounts have breweries throughout the West making this hastily invented, rudimentary lager-ale hybrid by the start of the 20th century. And that might’ve been steam’s peak were it not for laundry money. ... In the 1960s, big operations such as Anheuser-Busch and Miller were hoovering up market share with uniformly made pilsner that tasted much blander and sweeter than its Czech original. These homogeneous beers could be bottled and canned, and then shipped far and wide, thanks to preservatives and refrigeration, never mind the new Interstate Highway System. Bud, Miller, Coors, Pabst, et al, tasted the same wherever it landed — that is to say, watery and slightly sweet (“alcoholic soda pop,” as Sam Adams’ originator, Jim Koch, once so perfectly described it). Anchor Steam, on the other hand, was a culinary freak show. It was available only in kegs because a dearth of retail accounts did not justify the expense of bottling or canning — and the brewery probably couldn’t have done so without releasing case after case of sour or spoiled steam. Anchor Brewing and its signature beer would both surely be gone soon, dying embers in a once-blazing American beer landscape. But, crucially, Anchor’s remaining retail accounts were loyal, if for no better reason than nostalgia for a San Francisco original. One of those accounts was the Old Spaghetti Factory, a campily decorated bar that served as an early counterculture siren. In August 1965, Old Spaghetti Factory owner Fred Kuh ambled over to one of his regulars, a trim, bespectacled, 20-something former Stanford graduate student in Japanese studies. The young man was drinking the only beer that Kuh kept on draft: Anchor Steam. In an exchange now all but sacral to craft beer aficionados, Kuh asked his regular if he had ever been to the brewery; when he replied in the negative, Kuh encouraged him to pay it a visit. The next morning, Kuh’s regular walked the roughly mile and a half from his apartment to the brewery then on Eighth and Brannan Streets; and, after poking around a bit, bought a 51-percent stake for what he later described as less than the price of a used car. The young man could do so because he was Fritz Maytag, an heir to the home-appliance fortune his great-grandfather founded. The idea of owning the last small-batch, traditional brewery in San Francisco — maybe in America — appealed to him. “I was just enthralled with the idea of a business that had character, and history, and curiosity,” Maytag told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015. “Plus, it was so little money.” Maytag would buy full control of the brewery in 1969, and then set about radically reforming its signature offering. He ditched the sugar and food coloring that the old Anchor was using, and switched to all malted grains, especially crystal malt (aka caramel malt). He started using the Northern Brewer hop, a relatively young breed from England. (https://www.eater.com/beer/2017/10/10/16434064/anchor-steam-beer-history-san-francisco)

In 19th-century California, brewers found a strain of lager yeast which would ferment at higher temperatures. The flavor of beer is influenced by the strain of yeast and the fermentation temperature. Lager yeast is best used at temperatures from 48 to 58 °F (9 to 14 °C). Classic lagering of beers takes place over a period of time from weeks to many months at a temperature of 37 °F (3 °C). Conversely, ale yeast is best used at temperatures from 55 to 75 °F (13 to 24 °C). Fermentation by ale yeasts produces a beer that has a more distinct flavor. Steam Beer uses bottom fermenting lager yeasts at ale temperatures, which results in a very distinctive flavor profile that includes both ale and lager characteristics.[5] While steam beer is considered a specialty microbrew style of beer today, it was originally a cheap beer made for blue collar workers. Wahl and Heinus's American Handy Book of Brewing and Malting (1902) describes California Steam Beer as “a very clear, refreshing drink, much consumed by the laboring classes", and while most modern California common beers are all-barley malt, adjuncts were often used in the early days. Malt, grits, or raw cereals of any kind, and sugars, especially glucose, were added in the kettle and roasted malt or sugar coloring used to give the amber color of Munich beer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

Anchor introduced a yeast strain specific to its steam beer — improbably, the brewery had occasionally been using baker’s yeast out of desperation, according to Randy Mosher. The end result of these changes was a consistently delicious and unique beer ready for bottling, which Maytag finally did in April 1971. It was soon available beyond California, especially in Colorado and parts of the East Coast. It was a curiosity at the time, a bubbly, malty, kind of bittersweet alternative to the watery pilsners dominating the marketplace. “We were what the whole craft brewing industry is today: a combination of modern food science technology and traditional brewing,” Maytag said in 2015. “It was a unique combination. That was really our secret.” Anchor Steam would remain largely a San Francisco curiosity throughout the 1970s, until that wider distribution and a cresting craft beer wave in the 1980s carried it farther and further than ever before. (https://www.eater.com/beer/2017/10/10/16434064/anchor-steam-beer-history-san-francisco)

Jack London refers to steam beer in his "alcoholic memoir", John Barleycorn, in a passage explaining how he started drinking in late-1880s San Francisco: The first day I worked in the bowling alley, the barkeeper, according to custom, called us boys up to have a drink after we had been setting up pins for several hours. The others asked for beer. I said I'd take ginger ale. The boys snickered, and I noticed the barkeeper favoured me with a strange, searching scrutiny. Nevertheless, he opened a bottle of ginger ale. Afterward, back in the alleys, in the pauses between games, the boys enlightened me. I had offended the barkeeper. A bottle of ginger ale cost the saloon ever so much more than a glass of steam beer; and it was up to me, if I wanted to hold my job, to drink beer. As a budding writer, "a wild band of young revolutionists invited me as the guest of honour to a beer bust" and was challenged to a drinking contest. I'd show them, the young rascals.... These unlicked cubs who thought they could out-drink me! Faugh! It was steam beer. I had learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

Frank Norris's 1899 novel McTeague, set in San Francisco, sets the stage with a reference to steam beer in its opening paragraph: It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner.... By and by, gorged with steam beer, and overcome by the heat of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. When he marries, his wife convinces him to adopt more refined habits: She broke him of the habit of eating with his knife, she caused him to substitute bottled beer in the place of steam beer, and she induced him to take off his hat to Miss Baker, to Heise's wife, and to the other women of his acquaintance. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

According to the Beer Judge Certification Program, the term California Common beer, is "narrowly defined around the prototypical Anchor Steam example", and other commercial examples include Skyscraper Brewing Company Lug Nut Lager, Moab Brewery Rocket Bike Lager, Southampton West Coast Steam Beer, Old Dominion Victory Amber, Flying Dog Old Scratch Amber Lager, Schlafly's Pi Common, Linden Street Common Lager, Eagle Steam Beer and Cosmic Brewing Company Plead the Fifth common lager.[6] The style "showcases the signature Northern Brewer hops (with woody, rustic or minty qualities) in moderate to high strength", is fermented with "a lager yeast, but one that was selected to thrive at the cool end of normal ale fermentation temperatures", and was traditionally fermented in open fermenters. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

Any imitators since have used the “common” or “California common” on their own interpretations of the American style, perhaps a franker and more accurate nod anyway to the style’s origins. (Some have incurred Anchor’s legal wrath for using “steam.”) And beer-judging bodies such as the Brewers Association have used “common” rather than “steam” in their categorizations, largely in deference to Fritz Maytag. (Maytag also received a 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation, in part for his work in keeping the beer style alive.) (https://www.eater.com/beer/2017/10/10/16434064/anchor-steam-beer-history-san-francisco)

Anchor Steam is a reinvented American original, a kind of Neanderthal of craft brewing that grew up alongside faster-evolving (European) styles such pale ale, India pale ale and pilsner, but never really interacted with them. Instead, there is Anchor Steam as it has been for decades, with a stylistic pedigree that has not left the lower 48 for at least a century and a half. Given this status and that of Anchor Brewing as the Rosetta stone of American craft breweries, that coverage of the Sapporo deal brought a chorus of obituaries for Anchor Steam as a “craft” beer. It was of the same species of faddish obsequies that followed the acquisitions of other beloved brews such as Lagunitas (to Heineken), Goose Island (to Anheuser Busch-InBev), and Wicked Weed (to Anheuser Busch-InBev again). Anchor Steam deserves the benefit of the doubt, though, for now. It’s earned it, after all. (https://www.eater.com/beer/2017/10/10/16434064/anchor-steam-beer-history-san-francisco)

A Steam Beer, also referred to as a California Common, or even sometimes a Steam Ale is a an interesting style of beer that is losing its history quickly these days. Technically (if we’re talking proper yeasts), a Steam Beer/California Common is a lager, but there’s quite a bit about its production that makes it an ale, so it gets the name Steam Ale on occasion. On that, many Steam Beers these days don’t strictly stick the lager yeast thing. This makes the style pretty broad. We’ve seen a few Steam Ale recipes using ale yeasts and these technically aren’t a California Common. If you want to go by Beer Judge Certification Program style guide for a California Common, you need to use a lager yeast. This is not your typical lager yeast. Instead, it’s designed to be able to ferment at warmer (ale) temperatures without creating a beer that’s not good to drink. Typically, a lager fermented at too high a temperature can turn out tasting of grass, banana, a bit of mint, or sulphur. The California Common/Steam Ale tends to avoid these flavours overtly while also embracing them by selecting the right lager yeast and ingredients to get rid of them, disguise them, diminish them, or a combination of the three. Basically speaking, brewers are selecting a lager yeast that can deal with the higher temperatures. Combine this with the less pine and citrus oriented American hops and it makes a pretty decent beer with some fruit to it and interesting malt characteristics. The Name Steam Beer Firstly, a note on copyright. Anchor Brewing owns the rights to the name “Steam Beer,” so while the style may be casually referred to as a Steam Beer, the generic term is forced to be Steam Ale or California Common. As explained, the term Steam Ale is a misnomer as the style is actually a lager, but it’s brewed like an ale. So that’s probably where it gets the “ale” term. We here at Brew in Review prefer the name California Common. It just sounds cooler. Plus we don’t like calling ales lagers or vice versa. It just seems wrong. (https://brewinreview.com/what-is-a-steam-beer/)

When Canadian brewer Sleeman introduced a product called Steam Beer in Canada in 1999, Anchor sued for trademark infringement, since it had trademarked the term steam beer in Canada ten years earlier. Canadian courts dismissed the suit and subsequent appeals,[8] ruling that Anchor's Canadian trademark was invalid, since the beer had not been marketed in Canada up to that time. After Sapporo bought Sleeman in a $400-million takeover in 2006,[9] Sleeman's production of Steam Beer was discontinued. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

In Richmond, Virginia, the remains of a former Yuengling brewery along the James River were once called David Yuengling Jr.'s James River Steam Brewery, located at (or near) 912 East Main St. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

Steam beer may have developed in parallel in North Korea. Due to the scarcity of electricity, a North Korean beer style very similar to steam beer has developed because it does not require refrigeration.[15] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_beer)

North Korea has a robust domestic beer brewing culture, despite its isolation from the outside world. Famously, the regime bought a British brewery in 2000 for £1.5m and had the whole thing shipped and rebuilt on the edges of the capital, Pyongyang.... The people of North Korea love a beer as much as Europeans or North Americans, but the culture around brewing is obviously different in some unique ways. Thomas' itinerary in his trip took him to many of the same museums, parks and national monuments that every tourist to North Korea sees, but it also featured special stops at some North Koren breweries where he could share knowledge with locals and sample the local suds. ... Because electricity is in short supply in North Korea, the refrigeration required for lagers is simply impossible, so the majority of beers we drank were either ales or "steam beers"... Their beer is very similar to the American beer brand Anchor Steam. Darker, fuller-bodied, hoppier, and delicious, it was hands down better than South Korean beer!...  Steam beer? Steam beer is a style invented (ironically) in the United States -- the only beer style to originate from the US -- during the California Gold Rush. Based on German-style lagers, but fermented at ale temperatures, it was a popular drink created out of necessity in locations where refrigeration is impossible. It seems the North Koreans discovered this style by accident, and their beer is very similar to the American beer brand Anchor Steam. Darker, fuller-bodied, hoppier, and delicious, it was hands down better than South Korean beer! Obviously we tried many different beers in the country, ranging from steam beers, to oatmeal stouts, to chocolate porters and pale ales, so its hard to generalise, but I'd have to say the average beer is a steam beer. The only real difference between the steam beers I had in the DPRK and the steam beers in the US was that they seem to have a hard time cleaning their tanks, I assume because of the difficulty of getting certain chemicals into the country because of the trade embargo. Certain steam beers tasted a bit of tanks that needed to be cleaned, and imparted a bit more metallic taste as a consequence. However, all in all, they were delicious beers. ... The North Koreans are incredibly clever at making do with very little, and they honestly were able to make more interesting beers than most other countries of the world. Their beers were a little short on hops, and I could explain that as they perhaps are having a hard time importing or growing them. However, I find it much more likely that, in a climate that naturally grows the hop plant, the lack of hops is more easily explained by palate of Koreans. They simply don't like beers as hoppy as the craft beers I brew and drink. (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/north-korea-breweries)

North Korea has at least ten major breweries and many microbreweries that supply a wide range of beer products. The top brand is the light lager Taedonggang by the state-owned Taedonggang Brewing Company. The country's problems with goods distribution and power output have forced North Korean brewers to innovate. To minimize distribution, many restaurants and hotels maintain their own microbreweries. Because unreliable power supply makes it difficult to refrigerate beer, North Koreans have developed their own steam beer, an originally American beer style brewed in higher than normal temperatures, that is widely available. Although the Korean liquor soju is preferred, beer comes second when it comes to consumption. Since the 1980s, beer has been within reach of ordinary North Koreans, though it is still rationed. Tourists, on the other hand, enjoy inexpensive beer without such limitations. .. The Japanese brought beer to Colonial Korea in the 1930s in the form of German lager beers.[1] After WWII and independence, until at least 1960, all beer in North Korea was produced domestically.[2] By the 1980s, beer was in such wide availability that most North Koreans could drink it.[3] Until the mid-1990s when the state rationing system started to crumble, North Koreans would receive one bottle of Korean liquor soju and three bottles of beer for every major public holiday in North Korea.[4] All North Korean beers are bottled in domestic made glass bottles.[5] During the North Korean famine, beer bottles were used for intravenous therapy (IV) due to the shortage of proper hospital equipment.[6] ... There are many microbreweries in the country.[12] The "surprising microbrewery culture" can be explained with regards to sanctions against North Korea that limit the availability of petrol, thus making distribution of beer a particularly difficult part of the product lifecycle:[15] "[I]t is a country of microbreweries. The hotel makes their own beer. The bowling alley makes their own beer. The restaurants make their own beer. The national Taedonggang beer was certainly available throughout the entire country, but any location with sufficient space for a microbrewery, they seemed to build one in order to offset any supply chain inefficiencies."[15] Many bars and hotels brew their own beer.[34] The Koryo Hotel, for instance, houses a microbrewery that serves what is considered "the best dark beer in town".[27] There is also a microbrewery at the Chongjin Tourist Hotel in Chongjin.[35] A microbrewery with Czech-made equipment exists in the Rason Special Economic Zone.[36] Only the Taedonggang Brewing Company could be classified as a "macro" brewery and the rest are, in effect, microbreweries.[12] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_North_Korea)

Wow, dus van Duits bier, naar Amerikaans bier, naar Noord Koreaans bier. En dan heb ik nog een draadje over steampunk:

Steampunk is a fantasy genre that’s defined by a focus on the style of the industrial era mashed up against futuristic technology. In a retroactive sense, steampunk introduced major story props such as automatons and airships.... The term “steampunk” is actually more contemporary than you might think. Who invented steampunk? Writer K. W. Jeter is credited with coining the term “steampunk” as a riff on the popular 1980s label “cyberpunk.” In a 1987 letter to science-fiction magazine Locus, Jeter wrote “I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for [Tim] Powers, [James] Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like "steam-punks.” In the years that followed, all pieces of art that reconstructed Victorian-era settings with retro-futuristic costumes and devices inherited the label. ... Steampunk (as we know it today) wasn’t formally defined until 1987 – but that hasn’t stopped people from ascribing the term to much older works. In fact, many casual observers suggest the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are steampunk; scholars argue they’re precursors to the movement. (https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-steampunk-definition/)

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.[1][2][3] Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism[4] — and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.[5] Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.[6] Other examples of steampunk contain alternative-history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.[7][8] Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre.[9] As a form of speculative fiction, it explores alternative futures or pasts but can also address real-world social issues.[10] The first known appearance of the term steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of fiction created as far back as the 1950s or earlier[11] A popular subgenre is Japanese steampunk, consisting of steampunk-themed manga and anime,[12] with steampunk elements having appeared in mainstream manga since the 1940s.[13] Steampunk also refers to any of the artistic styles, clothing fashions, or subcultures that have developed from the aesthetics of steampunk fiction, Victorian-era fiction, art nouveau design, and films from the mid-20th century.[14] Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.[15] ... Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s, the term steampunk originated largely in the 1980s[27] as a tongue-in-cheek variant of cyberpunk. It was coined by science fiction author K. W. Jeter,[28] who was trying to find a general term for works by Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates, 1983), James Blaylock (Homunculus, 1986), and himself (Morlock Night, 1979, and Infernal Devices, 1987) — all of which took place in a 19th-century (usually Victorian) setting and imitated conventions of such actual Victorian speculative fiction as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. In a letter to science fiction magazine Locus,[27] printed in the April 1987 issue, Jeter wrote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk)

Maareh dit is geen reisblog of cultuurrecensie, nee het is een bierblog. Dus terug naar het bier:

Session IPA’s zijn India Pale Ale’s met een lager alcoholgehalte en een meer hoppig profiel. Dus hou je van zonneschijn? Hou je van bier drinken? En vind je het soms leuk om die twee te combineren? Haal dan een paar lekkere session bieren in huis! Een session gaat prima samen met warm weer en zonneschijn. ... Een jonge verschijning op de internationale bier bühne. De term session bier heeft de neiging verwarrend te zijn. Volgens BeerAdvocate is de definitie van een session beer “een bier van minder dan 5,0% ABV met een mooi evenwicht tussen mout en hop dat een zuivere afdronk en een hoge drinkbaarheid vertoont”. Als we kijken naar de Top Rated Beers van Untappd, is de term session alleen van toepassing op IPA: IPA – Session/India Session Ale.... RateBeer deelt Sessions ook in bij IPA’s, en vertelt ons dat “deze klasse van bieren ontstond rond 2010 uit de Craft Beer traditie als een reactie op de trend van steeds sterkere bieren en een grotere publieke waardering voor hoppige bieren. Ze onderscheiden zich van de American Pale Ale doordat ze doorgaans een lager alcoholgehalte hebben en een meer hoppig profiel.”(https://www.uiltjebrewing.com/bieren/session-ipa/)

Steam Brew Session IPA 17. November 2021 ... Bier-Test: Wir haben das Bier "Steam Brew Session IPA" getestet und nach unseren Bewertungskriterien beurteilt. Neben allen Informationen zur Herkunft, zum Alkoholgehalt, zur Stammwürze, zu den IBU und zu den Zutaten findet Ihr in diesem Steam Brew Session IPA-Test unsere Bewertungen: vom Geruch des Bieres bis zum Biergeschmack. Im Ergebnis führt unsere unabhängig voneinander abgegebene Benotung zu einer Gesamtbewertung. Daraus erstellen wir eine übersichtliche Biertabelle. Hier könnt Ihr sehen, wie die einzelnen Biere im Test abgeschnitten haben. Nun folgt unsere Einschätzung des Bieres Steam Brew Session IPA.... Unsere Bewertungskriterien Schaumbildung: viel Schaumhaltbarkeit: langanhaltend Geruchsintensität: stark Geruchsbalance: fruchtig, tropisch, exotisch Bierfarbe: Gelb Biertrübung: opal Kohlensäuregehalt: mittel Geschmack: exotisch & tropisch mit Fruchtnoten von Ananas und Passionsfrucht sowie Pinie und Kiefer (https://www.bierwertung.de/biere/ipa/ipa-session/steam-brew-session-ipa-test/)